Chive Talkin'

This is just a quickie post pending a longer segment on the progress of the garden. For dinner tonight we made a mixed garden salad - one of the healthiest and easiest salads to make. Lettuce, bits of carrots, sliced mushrooms, onion slices, radishes, sweet red peppers and to top it off: Homemade Ranch Dressing.

Homemade sounds like work but I assure you that this recipe is easy and far healthier than the store-bought variety. Here's whatcha need:

1/2 cup of mayonnaise

1/2 cup of non-fat sour cream

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper

A few tablespoons of milk or cream or half and half (almost any dairy product that you have on hand will work)
And one more important ingredient: Fresh Chives

Fresh chives are a terrific addition to many dishes and are the easiest - and I mean easiest seasoning to grow. Chives themselves are a sort of half and half - halfway between a veggie and an herb - since they grow and are flavored like onions but only the green shoots are used in cooking. Just snip some off the top and chop or dice. Not only is integrating them into your cooking easy, but the growing part is pretty easy too. Chives are a perennial meaning that once planted they will essentially grow forever. Even if you cut off all of the shoots to use (not that you would ever need that much) they will grow back rather quickly.

Mmmm... can't wait to dig into that salad!